According to Net Marketshare, Google is the world’s most popular search engine. No shocker there, but you’ve probably never heard of the search engine that’s in second place.
It’s called Baidu, and it’s from China. Though Baidu isn’t exactly a household name here in the U.S., it’s pretty big. In fact, the company is even referred to as “China’s Google.”
As of this past June, Google occupies 68.75 percent of the global search engine pie. Baidu is a distant second, carving out 18.03 percent for itself. That’s more than Yahoo and Bing combined. Yahoo holds third place as of June, with 6.73 percent. Bing trails it, eating up only 5.55 percent of the global search engine market, as of last month.
On top of that, Baidu’s share has consistently grown in recent months, Net Marketshare’s data indicates. For instance, back in March, its share was rated at 16.77 percent. Fast forward to June, and that number has risen, without any drops in between, to 18.03. That’s a growth rate of almost 1.3 percent from March to June – not bad at all, considering that Baidu’s competition consists of some of the biggest tech and web companies in the history of the world. Plus, their U.S. penetration is likely close to nil at this point.
Though Baidu is the search engine of choice for many Chinese people, the company has made moves to woo the interest of English speaking developers. Back in 2013, Baidu launched an English-language site tailored towards devs. They have even hired people away from Google, like Andrew Ng, the company’s former head of artificial intelligence.
Though Google’s search engine share easily trumps Baidu’s at this point, could we someday be saying “Baidu it,” instead?
That doesn’t quite roll off the tongue as well though, does it?
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